The website scroll bar & why it’s your friend
March 22nd, 2013Having watched many people navigate a website it appears most people scroll down a web page to read and view content, completely unconsciously. It’s more of a conscious action on a mobile device as we tend to scroll more. When we do this, a scroll bar comes into view on the browser to enable those not on a touch [...]
Archiving your brand for the future
March 13th, 2013Though any good branding should last you years into the future, it’s likely over decades your brand will evolve. The way you communicate, your chosen target market, or what you offer is likely to develop and change, and your branding, marketing and communications can and should evolve to effectively reflect this. But don’t let the old disappear [...]
Do you have a brand or just a business?
February 6th, 2013Often small businesses don’t consider themselves to have a brand, they just have a business. A brand sounds too grand, too ‘big’. But from a design perspective every business has a brand, whether it’s intentional or not. Regardless of size or structure your business has ‘touch-points’ where people outside and inside of your business; clients, [...]
Why web design trends 2013 could be bad for your business
January 22nd, 2013At the beginning of the year design trends for the coming twelve months are everywhere. But what good do trends do for your business? Trends are not cultural, technical or aesthetic shifts, so I’m not talking about innovations that lead to new ways of designing. What I’m referring to here is fashions for look, feel, layout [...]
Finding & using images on your blog & website
January 15th, 2013Using images on your blog can help to communicate your message, provide visual interest, and make your blog more readable. However finding effective images, that you have permission to use can be tricky especially when it’s hard enough to find the time to blog in the first place. So here are our tips and advice [...]
Getting it right first time – your website
November 28th, 2012Investing correctly in a website that is scalable, and on message is the most cost effective way to get your business online. Many new businesses understandably focus on getting a basic online presence during their start-up phase, but end up paying for a second full website that actually meets their needs further down the line. Having worked [...]
Choosing a domain name for your business
November 1st, 2012Buying a website address is probably one of the first things new business people think about when they start up. There are a few different approaches to choosing a domain… Your business name The most common option is choose your business name or something close to it. Like us, we chose www.twizzlebird.co.uk. If you [...]
Managing Your Business Online; Intellectual Property, Copyright & more…
September 26th, 2012This week we have a guest blogger Contact Law. Contact Law have kindly offered to provide our readers with some pointers on protecting your Intellectual Property, copyright and more online. So here’s handing over to them…. Protect your identity Intellectual property, or IP for short, is the term which describes the parts of your [...]
Fonts you can use safely on your website
August 2nd, 2012Sometimes people feel they are very restricted in choosing which fonts they can use on their website, when actually very often there are ways of working around it to free you up. The font choice is really important to give your brand the right look and feel, to keep it consistent on and offline, make [...]
How your website can flex to suit your visitors
July 25th, 2012A website unlike a printed page is flexible not just in terms of content but in terms of layout and visitor experience. People are visiting your website in widely varying ways. Not only the type of device; desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone etc but then on different web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and more) and [...]
Effective websites in a social world; must-have #5
July 19th, 2012In the final of a series of five posts I’m sharing the fifth of our “5 must-haves for an effective website in a social world” the subject of my talk at this year’s Business North West. Social media sites have been a real catalyst for improving the design of user experience on websites, making [...]
Effective websites in a social world; must-have #4
July 13th, 2012In the fourth of a series of five posts I’m sharing the fourth of our “5 must-haves for an effective website in a social world” the subject of my talk at this year’s Business North West. The use of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices is on the rapid increase. According to Ofcom statistics [...]